Younger generations may be aging biologically faster than those before them, and this change could help explain the rise in cancer cases at younger ages.
Experts have associated this phenomenon with factors such as obesity, poor diet, physical inactivity, metabolic disorders and environmental exposure. However, none of these explanations alone can justify the observed trend.
Scientists distinguish between chronological agecorresponding to the lifespan of a person, biological agewhich reflects the state of the body’s tissues, organs and systems.
Thus, two people with the same chronological age can have very different biological ages, influenced by genetics, lifestyle and environmental factors.
In one, published this month in Nature Medicineresearchers analyzed data from 160 thousand people in the UK and USA. They found that participants born more recently showed signs of a more advanced biological age than previous generations, when compared to the same chronological age.
According to , researchers evaluated the systemic agingwhich represents the general biological state of the organism, and the specific aging of organs, through the analysis of proteins circulating in the blood associated with different systems of the body. This approach made it possible to estimate the biological age of tissues without resorting to invasive procedures.
In the UK, people born between 1965 and 1974 had higher levels of systemic aging than those born between 1950 and 1954. In the US, the difference was even more pronounced. Participants born between 1990 and 1999 revealed significantly higher levels when compared to those born between 1965 and 1969.
Although the study does not allow us to identify the exact cause of this phenomenon, the researchers suggest that changes in diet, physical activity, sleep patterns, environmental exposure, stress and other aspects of modern life may contribute to this accelerated aging.
The results also showed that greater systemic aging was associated with a 8% increase in the risk of early-onset cancers. Participants with the highest levels of biological aging faced a 15% higher risk compared to those who recorded the lowest levels.
These associations remained even after adjusting for genetic factors related to hereditary cancer risk and accelerated aging.
Despite these results, the study does not demonstrate that accelerated biological aging directly causes cancer, nor does it explain why younger generations seem to age more quickly. Still, it opens up a new perspective for understanding the increase in early-onset cancer cases.
